MOGADIȘU, Somalia (AP) – Pressure is mounting on the Somali government amid allegations that Somali soldiers have been sent to fight in the deadly Tigray conflict in neighboring Ethiopia.
The mothers staged rare protests in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere, demanding the fate of their children who were initially sent to Eritrea for military training. They fear that their children have been deployed in the Tigray region, where Ethiopian forces are fighting the Tigray in November in a conflict that threatens to destabilize the Horn of Africa.
“We have heard that our children sent to Eritrea have been taken for military training and their responsibility has been handed over to (Ethiopian Prime Minister) Abiy Ahmed to fight for him,” said Fatuma Moallim Abdulle, the mother of a 20-year-old soldier. Ahmed Ibrahim Jumaleh told the Associated Press.
“According to the information we gathered, our children were taken directly to the city of Mekele,” she said, the capital of the Tigray region. “Maybe you understand how I feel, I’m a mother who carried her baby in my womb for nine months, this is my blood and flesh.”
This week, Ethiopia denied reports of Somali soldiers in Tigray and continued to deny the presence of Eritreans.
Abiy made peace with neighboring Eritrea in 2018, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, critics say Ethiopian and Eritrean forces have united in a conflict against a common enemy in the now-fledged Tigray leaders, who dominated the Ethiopian government for nearly three decades before Abiy took office and engaged in the regional peace process that included Somalia.
Somali President Abdullahi Mohamed Abdullahi has been asked by the head of the country’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, Abdulqadir Ossoble Ali, to investigate allegations of involvement in the Tigray conflict.
“We have the right to oversee what our government is doing,” Ali wrote in a letter to the press.
And former deputy director of the Somali intelligence agency, Ismael Dahir Osman, said “it is a question worth asking why these soldiers have not yet returned home after more than a year when their training ended with long time ago”.
Somali Information Minister Osman Abokor Dubbe this week denied “propaganda” that Somali soldiers abroad were involved in the Tigray conflict.
“There are no Somali troops required by the Ethiopian government to fight for them and fight in Tigray,” he said.
The problem came at a sensitive time in Somalia. The country is set to hold national elections in the coming weeks, but two federal states have refused to run, and the opposition accuses the president of trying to advance by a partial vote.
“The parents of these children continue to call us and have no contact with their children, and some of them have been told that their boys have died,” an opposition presidential candidate, Abdurahman Abdishakur Warsame, told the AP. “According to the information we receive, those boys were taken to war in northern Ethiopia. We are asking for an independent national commission to investigate the issue and, if it turns out to be true, it will mean betrayal on a national scale. “